acctualy shader 4 supports the ONLY thing i really see dx10 bringing and that can be used under dx9, and wont bring any "quility enhancments" infact the one dx10 demo thats been shown people like the look of the dx9 bersion beter(ruby)

all the hype about dx10 is for not, ask some game devs who are making games with dx9 and 10, the only thing 10 brings is more dirrect hardware access, and guess what, amd/ati already offer that for video hardware, companys can compile software to run fully on the gpu, and some game companys are :O

thats with and without hdr m8 nothing there that cant be done in dx9 and that wont be dont in dx9, read the fing specs yourself, dx10 really is just ms trying to remove vendor spicific api calls and trying to bring hardware to a middle ground so its all comprable in abilities using the exect same api calls.

btw those shots are like hdr vs no hdr on farcry , looks impressive to you because your insisting its all thanks to dx10, but to me and anybody whos not a vista fanboi it clearly just looks like what it is, HDR!!!!!!

try farcry sometime m8, enable hdr, you will be quite impressed at the diffrance it can make
(talking about age of conan)

ms intentionaly pushes Microsoft Flight Simulator X as dx10 looking better because they want to sell people on dx10, fact is the exect same thing can be done in dx9, corse you are and have been a vista fanboi since i started here, so thats not gonna change, but a little advice, red up on fetures of dx10, the acctualy d3d10 fetures , compare them to dx9, you will find that the real rendering diffrances are not as impressive as you seem to think they are.

shader model4 brings the idea of unified shaders to the table, good idea, when companys acctualy start following it then we will see how it works out, that is if they follow the idea and dont just stick with fixed number of shader types(vertex/pixel/exct) and just add more as they have with the first gen dx10 cards.

btw i have flight sim 2007, and saw the demo video of it on dx10, the water textures look better but guess what, the movment dosnt feel real, its not acctualy rendering the serfice as a bunch of peeks and valys, its just a texture over a low complexity mesh, as stated the exect same thing can be done on dx9.

oh find some shots of farcry on 64bit xp vs 32bit xp, note how it looks "so much kooler" then note that the only real diffrance is better textures, and that somebody moded it so you could use those textures on 32 bit windows.

exectly, and if you check around, (say some forums full of game programers) you will see that they agree about the age of conan shots, they are saying that those shots are being done with shader2 mode and slitly lower detail texturs, and dx10 is just HDR+upped res textures(like farcry 64bit, infact that gets mentioned if you dig around some other forums)

its not like the move from dx8 to 9 where dx9 offered VERY programable shaders and dx8 didnt, halflife2 wouldnt look better in dx9 mode vs dx10 mode if it was patched up to dx10 mode, i really cant see valve making it look better just to make dx10 look better then 9, specly when they prooved that u can do shader based hdr and do it well :O

"we also have a few ideas about how to use the geometry shader to do effects that are impossible on a DirectX 9 card"

" the person with the old card is going to see less, have a lower resolution and pretty bad lighting. On the older cards, we will try to draw as much as we can, but we might need to cut some corners, draw some low LOD versions of players and monsters, and possibly pull in the far clip plane. We are going to make every effort to make sure that there isn't a gameplay advantage to having superior hardware, but the game will look radically different between our very low min spec and the DirectX10 version"

"A DirectX10 graphics card is a big technological step from the previous generation of cards. Not only are they going to be a big jump in polygon counts and pixel fill rate, they give developers many, many more tricks that they can do. I think that most games are going to have a big visual difference between what a player will see on a DirectX 9 card and what they will see on a DirectX 10 card."

"xtremeTech: DX10 adds quite a few significant new features and changes to the API (and hardware requirements)—stuff that may potentially change the way games are made. Which new feature matters most to you?

Yerli: The geometry shader, together with texture arrays, can greatly simplify some render-to-texture operations. This can speed up things like shadow computations, reflections and refractions. "

"Edlund: Integrating DirectX 10 into our application will allow a much richer and more detailed world to be rendered at equivalent frame rates. Over the next releases, we will be continuing to increase the level of realism, detail in the world and world objects, dynamic lighting and subtleties, weather effects, and extending the capabilities of user interaction, exploration, and camera control in our world-spanning rendering environment."

"DirectX 10 will allow developers to take advantage of more of the DirectX 9 functionality, in addition to the new DirectX 10 features, to create more realistic scenes, not just showcased objects, then ever before possible. Supporting this is a more stable and coherent driver architecture that will end the days of driver crashes interrupting your game experience. By freeing the CPU up to do more game-related processing, you will see a quantum leap in the depth of AI, physics, character interaction and realism that becomes inherent in the next generation of games. "

"Godager: Because of the different architecture of the DX10 system, I think the biggest difference will be in the richness of the content. There will be more objects, more characters, more particles, longer view distance, more grass and foliage."

"any things are easier to work with on DX10. We can move several things from the CPU onto the GPU, like pre-skinned characters; geometry shaders will save bandwidth, texture arrays will save draw calls, and it's a generally more-efficient API. All this adds to a more effective rendering engine, giving the programmers more freedom to do other things they want. We are quite excited about being among the forerunners in DX10 game development and hope to be able to give players a richer, fuller experience when they invest in this hardware."

Jadawin: with ati cards(x1k) they can already move anything they like off the cpu onto the gpu, ati/amd have a dev kit for programing dirrectly for the GPU itself not just using dx9/10/wtfe

and i know game devs, they like the ideas in dx10, but they all say the same thing, the only real thing this does is stop cards from being so diffrent that they cant do the same things, such as the g70/71 cant do hdr+aa at the same time, ms wanted to remove that, also wanted to allow more dirrect access to the gpu, same thing ati/amd already have.

maby you should try acctualy talking to some people who acctualy program for dx9/10 and opengl.

next you will say dx10 is better then ogl2.3 ROFL, yeah sure, have fun, injoy reading topics that are at best interviews with a few game dev managers and at worst, reviews by reviewers who really dont know what they are talking about.

oh and ati has supported geomotery on gpu for a very long time, and with dirrect gpu programing that can be fully moved to gpu as well.

and FYI, they say they can ad more detail at the same fraimrate because dx10 cards will be more burly/powerfull then dx9 cards, so they can load them up with more crap without having to do a good optimizing the code

well as is aid injoy, im sure others will chime in, but the fact remains that no games will need or take real advantege of dx10 for at least 1-2 years, by then the next windows os is due out, probbly with dx11 being pushed as well knowing ms......rofl.....never ending cycle of ainal pain!!!!

I hope Vista prices will go down so a mere mortal can actually afford it without selling his soul to the devil. I mean.. It's either food for 5 months or Vista Ultimate. And Home Premium is too weak and the others are useless for me.

Sure and I can't wait for the first real games to support it I enjoy the speed of by 8800GTX in DX9 games and I need a beefy card to run my 2560x1600, but DX10 was one of the reasons to buy it, too.

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ah but where are you dx10 drivers? where are your gold vista drivers?

oh i forgot, nvidia hasnt got vista drivers truely finnished yet, thats why i had to get the "whql" vista drivers from a 3rd party site when nv pulled them after amd announced that r600 was being delayed to q2.

eventuly i hope your 8800 gets decent vista(dx10)drivers because if it dosnt you will endup like i did with my fx5800ultra, a card that runs current games great but sucks total ass for new games (dx9 games ran like crap, hope that dosnt happen with the 8800 and dx10 games run like arse)

sall good, eventualy nvidia will eather fix their drivers or put out a new card and focus on that forgetting that the 8800 still dosnt got good drivers(ala 7950gx2 or quad sli.....rofl)

The main difference between DX9 and DX10 is less coding. You can add a lot more codes with out the performance hit and easy programing so it has been told. DX10 also interacts with the core of the O/s which speeds things up greatly.

To add to this you will have shader 4.0 it will take a full year before people figure out how to push it too the max.

Do you honestly want to push everything to the GPU? While that would be nice in some ares it would limit you on what you could do with the power of the CPU and GPU working together.

Video is a LOT different it is streaming content, it doesn't have a wire frame that is controlled by the user.

HDR is nice and DX10 with shader 4 just adds to that with a lot more lighting affects that dx9 can do agin with LESS WORK.

Farcry to me is last gen even the 64bit update ver...The game just looks dated now a days.

With Vista you have a lot more tools available to the user. More wizards and a totally rewritten O/s from the ground up unlike older vers of windows. While you might be able to make a lot of things in XP like Vista its not the same. Some people will say the same thing about windows 98SE and how they don't need all that extra stuff. But we all know the downfalls of the areas that XP out does its older brother.

I do expect DX10 to come to XP in emulation similar to 3dfx working under DX with a wrapper. This will not be perfect and will suffer by having to work a lot harder filling in the lines of code that will be needed to make it work.

The main difference between DX9 and DX10 is less coding. You can add a lot more codes with out the performance hit and easy programing so it has been told. DX10 also interacts with the core of the O/s which speeds things up greatly.

To add to this you will have shader 4.0 it will take a full year before people figure out how to push it too the max.

Do you honestly want to push everything to the GPU? While that would be nice in some ares it would limit you on what you could do with the power of the CPU and GPU working together.

Video is a LOT different it is streaming content, it doesn't have a wire frame that is controlled by the user.

HDR is nice and DX10 with shader 4 just adds to that with a lot more lighting affects that dx9 can do agin with LESS WORK.

Farcry to me is last gen even the 64bit update ver...The game just looks dated now a days.

With Vista you have a lot more tools available to the user. More wizards and a totally rewritten O/s from the ground up unlike older vers of windows. While you might be able to make a lot of things in XP like Vista its not the same. Some people will say the same thing about windows 98SE and how they don't need all that extra stuff. But we all know the downfalls of the areas that XP out does its older brother.

I do expect DX10 to come to XP in emulation similar to 3dfx working under DX with a wrapper. This will not be perfect and will suffer by having to work a lot harder filling in the lines of code that will be needed to make it work.

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vista is NOT totaly rewriten from the ground up, this only shows how missinformed you are, vista is based on server 2003 codebase, please dont post FUD, infact i will call APK over to back me on this, since i know you dont respect or belive me.

vista is based on 2003, its tweaked and modifyed on how it works, but it is still BASED ON 2003, as such its not a totaly new os fromthe ground up.

ms wont do that, dispite the fact that it would be smarter then just "recompiling the same code over and over" because it would take to long and would force them to loose alot of backword compatability support(smart move)

what i would like to see is ms stop trying to be a monopoly, see them re-write windows from the ground up, dump 16bit and lower app support, dump lagacy code form the core os, do simlar to what apple did with osx, allow older windows support via a virtual machien, 9x and even some nt5 apps run thru a virtual machien thats only loaded when needed, so the rest of the os can be VERY efficent.

then get over the dx is better then ogl wars and just COMBINE them as they tryed to do years back, give us one VERY powerfull graphical API thats totaly crossplatform, this wouldnt hurt their market share much if at all when it comes to windows, because most windows users are unwilling to try anything other then windows and would have the advantege of removing the large ammount of $ they spend trying to keep d3d ahead/up with ogl(2.3 of ogl is FAR more powerfull NOW then dx10 is or will be, just a matter of companys usint it)

OK maybe not totally rewritten but most if not a big part of it was. That was a part of the delay on it comming to the market. If I remember right even the Xbox team was sent in to help with this. I do think security under vista was taken a little too far in my book. Which I believe only a server should be Locked down as mush as it is. People should be protected behind a router and a server protecting people from this and that. LOL I derailed my self.

While openGL might be a powerful tool which is easier to program under?

OK maybe not totally rewritten but most if not a big part of it was. That was a part of the delay on it comming to the market. If I remember right even the Xbox team was sent in to help with this. I do think security under vista was taken a little too far in my book. Which I believe only a server should be Locked down as mush as it is. People should be protected behind a router and a server protecting people from this and that. LOL I derailed my self.

While openGL might be a powerful tool which is easier to program under?

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acctualy since ogl2 its become very much like dx in ease of programing, unlike older verisons, the problem is that the money people dont know about ogl so they only want to support what they do know, dx.

and the biggist delays acctualy came form them dumping fetures to "improve security" this wasnt the security your talking about but DRM type security to protect media from priacy(never works, so why do they keep trying? )

and the security in vista is good for noobs and laypeople it keeps them from accently doing something that could really mess the system up or them from downloading something that could screw the systme up, its built on the unix/linux user security model, you can dissable it and run in "admin" or "root" mode if you know how, but for noobs and avrage users its a good idea, keeps them from screwing things up to baddly

Ashen, I noticed that you continually bash Vista and DX10. Why? You accused others of being fanboys, but you're doing exactly the opposite, by being a hater. (or at least that's how it comes across) That's no better. On top of that, you reek of an ATI fanboy. That comes across as hypocrisy, my friend. I'm not trying to bash you, but that's how your statements come across, at least to me, anyway.

Regardless of what's possible in DX9, DX10 still lays the groundwork to be more powerful. Sure DX9 can do many of the things that DX10 can do, but DX10 will do it more efficiently. So where's the problem? OpenGL2.3 is better? It's not better if the game doesn't support it. And despite how good it would be to merge OGL and DX, that's not what is going on right now. It doesn't matter what should be, it only matters what is.

because vista is a beta os thats being sold as finnished, it was rushed out, it had ALOT of fetures removed to "improve" drm, and dx10 isnt what most people think it is, its an attempt by ms to kill gaming outside windows, and dosnt really bring anything new to the table but requiering sm4.

i dont like nvidia because they went from being the best gfx company PERIOD in the gf4 days to just putting out crap(fx line) then putting out so/so drivers, then so/so drivers and hardware(7 seirse) and now 8800 and its pathetic driver support, eventulay it may get better, but at this rate i dont see it.
ms put out the 7950gx2, and quadsli then pretty much dumped it once they sold a bunch of units to smuchs who thought they would acctualy support it.(no dirver fixes for quadsli or 7950gx2 buggs)

i hate software thats rushed out just to gain sales and give the company a new product to pimp, specly when its got as many buggs as vista has. after sp1 maby vista will be better, but for now i cant reccomend it to anybody, my mother got a free disk from gateway to upgrade her new laptop, she cant use vista because her NEW 500$ billing software cant run on vista thanks to flaws ms "will fix soon with a patch" the company reccomended she not use vista till sp1.......

ogl is better by default, its just getting game devs to use/support it, some do, Id for one, tho they are buttbuddys with nvidia they have for years been a huge supporter of OpenGL, the makers of the riddick game support ogl, look at ogl1.5 in doom3 vs dx9 in other games, sure doom3 is dark and gloomy but the point is still made, the quility and fx avalable even under a very old version of opengl are stunning compared to what people could get from dx, and ogl2 has brought things closer to dx for programing, made it easyer.

i email dev companys and state my feeling that ogl support would be a good move as it would also allow far easyerports to mac and *nix, sure its a small marketcompared to windows, but its a market who will enlarge buy games if they can run native under their os.(% wise more linux users buy software/games that support their os then windows users(warez baby) think its because alot of linux users know how much effort gos into making good games/apps and that if they dont support the companys that support their os they wont get more games for their os)

AshenSugar I don;t know it you remember this....It was back in november

ATI offers DirectX - OpenGL converter
Graphics chip maker ATI Technologies has released HLSL2GLSL, an open source application designed to help programmers convert graphics code optimized for Windows’ DirectX 9 Application Programming Interface (API) to OpenGL, which is used on the Mac. Binaries for Mac OS X and Windows are available for download.

High Level Shader Language (HLSL) was developed by Microsoft to enable programmers using its DirectX API to develop complex graphical effects. Its OpenGL equivalent is GLSL, and this application enables developers to translate HLSL shaders into GLSL instead. The software generated either GLSL 1.10.58 desktop OpenGL shaders or ES SL v1.00 embedded OpenGL ES shaders.

Many Mac OS X programmers already working on Mac games or cross-platform conversions already have home-rolled tools in their own libraries that provide them with the ability to convert DirectX code into OpenGL code. Commercial products exist that do the same. But ATI is offering this software — released earlier this month as version 0.9 — to further assist programmers who want some help.

The download includes documentation and a library file, along with a standalone command line application that converts snippets of HLSL code into GLSL instead.